


reefs and sounds

by leoandsnake



Series: un jour je serai de retour [6]
Category: Disco Elysium (Video Game)
Genre: Coalition being up to no good, Cuddling, M/M, Makeouts, Smoking, harry finds out how much money is in his checking account (none), harry is belatedly concerned that he used to sexually harass jean, jean and kim founding members of the Revacholian Federation Of Harry Partners, pre-martinaise harry (in flashback form), precinct 41 stuff, precinct 57 stuff, titus accidentally punches harry in the face, union stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-18 19:28:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29248815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leoandsnake/pseuds/leoandsnake
Summary: Harry folds his arms behind his back and walks up the two rickety steps to the church door, then turns to them grandly like a museum docent. “Gentlemen,” he says. “My theory.”“Yes?” Jean says, sounding impatient already.“For fuck’s sake, Jean, I haven’t even started talking yet,” Harry says.
Relationships: Harry Du Bois/Jean Vicquemare
Series: un jour je serai de retour [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2095374
Comments: 10
Kudos: 32





	reefs and sounds

Harry’s sleep is interrupted by nightmares, as usual; the threat of mortal peril dogs him from dream to dream. Everywhere he goes, everyone has guns and knives, and they all want to use them.

But each time he jerks awake, shaking, he realizes Jean is cuddled up with him, and that calms him. Harry reads the shadows on the wall to figure out what part of the early morning they’re in, then pets Jean’s hair until he falls back asleep.

When Harry wakes a final time that morning, he can tell it’s well past sunrise by the slant of light pouring through the gap between the two heavy curtains that now adorn the balcony door. Jean is no longer in the bed with him, but Harry can hear him coming up the stairs. A moment later his head appears, followed by the rest of him.

“Good morning,” Jean says to him, coming over to the bed and sitting on the edge of it next to Harry. He’s wearing nothing but boxers — a different pair than he had on last night.

VISUAL CALCULUS: Last night’s boxers are crumpled on the floor and pitifully crusty from being used to mop up ejaculate.

“Morning,” Harry says, sitting up. 

“Are you getting up, now?”

Harry nods. “Did you get up without me?”

“Yes, to shower,” Jean says. “You need your sleep.”

“You shower a lot.”

“I shower daily. A normal amount.”

RHETORIC: Mild implication that you could shower more.

“C’mere,” Harry says gruffly, reaching out for him.

Jean moves toward him with a tentative look, then drops into his arms, burying his face against Harry’s chest. Harry cages Jean in his arms, holding him, feeling the heat and the weight of him. He noses through Jean’s dark hair and presses a kiss to his scalp.

“Can I kiss you all day?” Harry says.

“No,” Jean murmurs. “We have things to do.”

Harry considers this. “I don’t want to do them,” he says. “I want to kiss you all day.”

Jean laughs; it’s a happy laugh. “Explain that to Pryce,” he says. “Better yet, explain it to Kitsuragi.”

“Kim would understand. He’s a cool guy.”

“I can guarantee he would not understand.”

Harry moves his head and nuzzles Jean’s face into a kissing position, then kisses him for a long time. His mouth is soft and tastes like toothpaste.

Jean breaks the kiss and says “Harry,” in a husky voice, but Harry doesn’t want to listen, so he just kisses him again. Jean lets Harry stick his tongue in his mouth once more before pulling his head back and repeating, “Harry…”

“Okay, we’ll go cop around and do cop shit, and take breaks to kiss,” Harry says.

Jean laughs. “No.”

“Do we have some time before we have to do cop shit, at least?”

“Maybe another thirty minutes,” Jean says. “The lieutenant is up, but he hasn’t gone downstairs yet, I could hear him in his room.”

INLAND EMPIRE: Ask Jean who he is. You know so little about this guy you’ve been sharing a bed with.

LOGIC: You actually know _everything_ about him, you just forgot it all.

“Who are you?” Harry says.

Jean’s brow knits. “Who am I?”

“Like, tell me about yourself. Let’s do… ah… pillow talk.”

“You want to do pillow talk?”

“Yeah.”

Jean leans into Harry, shifting his weight so he’s curled up under Harry’s right arm. Harry trails his fingers over Jean’s thigh, mussing his leg hair and playing with the hem of his boxers. “What do you want to know about me, Harry?”

EMPATHY: He finds the prospect of explaining himself to you exhausting and painful, but he’s willing to do it, in hopes that it’s a necessary precursor to you recovering your memory in whole.

“Do you have a family?” Harry says.

Jean laughs. “Yes.”

“Who are they?”

“I have a sister who lives in Jamrock. We’re somewhat close… not extremely. You’ve met her several times.”

“Parents?”

“My mother,” Jean says. “She lives a little further out.”

DRAMA: He’s being cagey about something, sire. There’s an omission afoot.

“Do you have a father?” Harry says.

His own father is a question mark in his mind, a smear of fog, a ghost. His entire childhood is. If he concentrates, he gets impressions of sounds and smells: glass shattering, shells whistling as they fell, the roar of airships, gunshots, the acrid scent of pollution and heavy fuel oil. No visuals.

“Of course I have a father,” Jean says. “ _Had_ a father... he’s dead.” He plays with Harry’s chest hair, twirling it around his finger.

“Sorry,” Harry says — because presumably, this is what you say.

“Don’t be.”

EMPATHY: Jean’s not upset, he’s angry; half at this dead father, and half at himself, for some reason.

“Was he a loser, or something?” Harry says.

“Yes, he was a loser,” Jean murmurs. “Alright, I’m going to tell you something, but you’re not allowed to draw any conclusions from it.”

CONCEPTUALIZATION: Aw, man!

“Okay,” Harry agrees. “Lay it on me.”

“My father was a mean alcoholic who wasn’t around very much.”

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: You hit the jackpot, Harry-boy! Daddy issues! Ka-ching!

“Oh,” Harry says.

“I told you not to draw conclusions,” Jean says crossly.

RHETORIC: As if anyone could help drawing conclusions from that.

“I’m not,” Harry lies. “I mean, my brain is, but _I’m_ not.”

Jean laughs at this. “It’s a coincidence,” he says. “Although my therapist is very insistent that it’s not.”

“So you do actually have a therapist?”

“I do. I wish I didn’t. He’s basically useless.”

“Why do you have him, then?” Harry says in curiosity, rubbing Jean’s arm, feeling gooseflesh rise where he touches him.

“I have to,” Jean says. “I failed an RCM psychological screening. I didn’t mean to, I usually lie my ass off on those, but they tripped me up with some question about how often I feel like life is hopeless and pointless. I thought it was normal to say often, that it was okay as long as you didn’t say _very_ often.”

“Often _isn’t_ a normal amount?” Harry says, alarmed.

“Of course it is, for people who are paying attention,” Jean says. “But because of that, the station made me go sit down with a shrink, and he poked around in my brain and sent me to another shrink, and now I have to see him once a month or they’ll take my gun away. I guess it’s a liability thing.”

“So your shrink thinks you have daddy issues?”

“Yes, all shrinks are obsessed with that sort of thing,” Jean says. “They think the root of everyone’s problems is mommy and daddy. The funny thing is you’re actually nothing like my father, you’re just also an aggressive drunk who’s mean to me sometimes. That’s where the resemblance ends. My father could _never_ have been a cop.”

RHETORIC: He says this with venom. It’s a point of pride for him.

ESPRIT DE CORPS: After the two of you started having sex, you often teased Jean about his manifest daddy issues — at first in an understanding, affectionate way, but the deeper you slithered into the bowels of alcoholism, the more sinister and angry you got about it. It was almost like you resented Jean for being primed to see your drinking for exactly what it was: a devastatingly mundane case of garden-variety alcoholism. A cliché. Both of you, clichés.

CONCEPTUALIZATION: There was never anything you wanted to be less than a cliché, and yet, that’s what you were. The more Jean’s existence and attitude toward you reinforced this fact, the more you resented him, the more desperate you became to drive him away. 

“I don’t want to be mean to you,” Harry says.

“Well, you were,” Jean says, exhaling. “But now... I don’t know. Now you’re like a combination of your old self and a child. It’s a little creepy.”

“I’m an adult,” Harry promises him. “Do I pass psychological screenings?”

“You only have one per year,” Jean says. “Lieutenants get fewer of them than officers do, plus you almost never kill anyone, so they tend not to bother with you. But I assume you lie about how sad you are, when they screen you. They really don’t care if you lie or not. It’s a cover-your-ass thing, for them.”

RHETORIC: It’s clear from his tone that he’s still deeply annoyed at himself for flubbing this.

EMPATHY: On some level, he wonders if it was an act of unwitting self-sabotage, some kind of cry for help. A failed one, because therapists are no help anyway, but even so.

“They might screen you again soon, actually,” Jean says. “I don’t think Trant’s diagnosis of capitalism making your brain explode is going to fly for very long.”

“I’m going to have to go see a _shrink_?” Harry says in terror.

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

He’s quiet for a moment. “Do you think Kim passes his psychological screenings?”

“I’m sure he does, with flying colors,” Jean says.

EMPATHY: Sore spot. Try not to compare Jean to Kim in ways that end up being unflattering to Jean. He does not appreciate this.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: It makes him less eager to fuck you, in case that needed to be spelled out.

“I think Kim was lonely at his old precinct,” Harry says, apropos of nothing. The words just tumble out of him, like he’s used to lying in bed with Jean, their bodies intertwined, while they construct psychological profiles of their contemporaries. “I think he didn’t have anyone there who _got_ him.”

“I think the lieutenant is a little bit of a lone wolf,” Jean says. “Like how you wanted to be, but for real, instead of just being a needy, weeping drunk mess who terrorized everyone until we fled from you.”

SAVOIR FAIRE: Lies and exaggerations, as usual from this guy.

Harry clears his throat and makes a noncommittal noise. “Kim isn’t perfect,” he says. “He was trapped in pinball hell for years, and now he’s an unrepentant speedfreak who steals hubcaps off cars. Plus, that one cigarette a day thing is super weird. So it’s okay that you’re sad and have daddy issues.”

“I do _not_ have daddy issues!” Jean exclaims.

Harry laughs and presses his nose to the nape of Jean’s neck, inhaling.

Something about the combination of smells that reaches his nostrils makes memories erupt in his mind, like open oil barrels overturned into a bay. The dark sludge of his past self rises to the top and starts spreading. Harry keeps his eyes shut tight, scared, then sniffs Jean’s hair again before he can stop himself from doing so.

(ESPRIT DE CORPS: Five years ago you were standing in a room full of radio computers. A few other cops were scattered around, working on printing out dossiers and daily schedules. Out of the corner of your eye, you saw Jean walk in.

You weren’t yet partners at this point. You _did_ suspect he was attracted to you; you were attracted to him right back, although you sublimated this and pretended you were interested purely in Jean’s brain. Your lack of conscious awareness didn’t stop you from flirting with him whenever possible, though. Flirting with someone who hung on your every word soothed the jagged edges of your heart where Dora had torn it open just a year prior.

“Vicquemare,” you called to him. He finished up a conversation he was having with someone else and came over to you as if ordered. He greeted you with “Lieutenant,” out of respect. Yes, you were already a lieutenant, though not yet _yefreitor_ either double or singular.

“Hi,” you replied to Jean, smiling at him. “You’re a young person, right? Can you help me here? I can’t remember how to log into our server, I always take a computer that’s already logged in.”

Jean took over for you at the radio computer, and you took a step back, watching him in profile as he worked. He got nervous under your fixed gaze and kept making small errors, although you didn’t notice. You’ve never been good with computers.

“What did you get up to over the weekend?” you said to him.

“Nothing exciting,” Jean said in a distracted tone. You liked the way he blinked when he was concentrating — dark lashes falling slowly over light eyes. “My sister wanted to go to the zoo for some reason.”

“The _Jamrock_ zoo?” you said in disbelief. “The worst zoo on earth?”

Jean started laughing and fucked up what he was doing, but again, you didn’t notice. “We hadn’t been since we were kids,” he said. “We forgot how shitty it was.”

“Oh, it’s terrible. I think half of the animals are actually dead, they’ve just taxidermied them.” Jean continued to laugh, and you stared at him hungrily; you liked making him laugh. “Hey, do you usually go out drinking with the rest of those guys you’re under me with — Torson, McLaine, Fischer?” Intentional use of ‘ _under me’._

Jean nodded. “You’re logged in now,” he said, and turned to look at you. “I do, yeah. Most weekends.”

You smiled at him, a shark’s smile. “You should come out with me and McCoy,” you said. “That’s where the real fun happens, when you’re out with the lieutenants. We get pretty wild.”

“Do you, sir?” Jean teased.

He wasn’t interested in getting wild; he was interested in _you_. Maybe a little interested in seeing _you_ get wild.

You, knowing full well that a superior officer shouldn’t touch an underling like that, reached up to squeeze him on the shoulder and then trailed your gloved fingers halfway down his arm before patting him and dropping your hand. “I do,” you said. “Come out with us this Friday night. I won’t take no for an answer.”

“If it’s an order,” Jean said, his eyes twinkling.

“It is,” you said.)

Harry snaps out of this memory like it’s a waking nightmare, groaning and pulling his knees to his chest, burying his face in the crook of his arm. He’s shaking and sweating again; that seemingly came on him out of nowhere, like he’s breaking a fever.

“Harry,” Jean is saying, sounding worried. “Harry.”

“I’m okay,” Harry groans, rocking back and forth in the bed. “Fuck. Shit. I just had a memory.”

“Yeah?” Jean now sounds both worried and hopeful. “Of what?”

“You,” Harry says. He lifts his head. The hellish vortex of emotion and memory is receding, leaving only this bright room, the shaft of sunlight falling onto the bed, the sheets beneath him, Jean’s hand on his back. “You, like, five years ago… I think we’d just met.”

“Five years ago? Why?”

“I don’t know. Probably because of all the shit you were just telling me.” Harry rubs his eyes with the meaty parts of his palms, making colors riot against the insides of his eyelids. “Jean, you didn’t tell me I was _gross_.”

“What?”

“I was! I remember, now — I knew you were into me, I knew I was at least a little bit into you, and I was sexually harassing you!”

“Harry,” Jean says, laughing. He kisses Harry on the shoulder. “You were flirty. I liked it, I flirted back. We became very good friends, once we got to know each other.”

“I’m a sex criminal,” Harry moans into his arm. “Sex lunatic.”

“We were partners for years before anything even happened between us,” Jean says. “Equals. You weren’t a sex lunatic. It’s a police station, not a nunnery, and I was thirty, not seventeen.”

Harry turns his head to Jean’s, and Jean kisses him, then breaks the kiss. In an undertone, his lips a centimeter from Harry’s, he murmurs, “There’s only one thing I’ve ever wanted you to apologize for, and that’s the fact that you chose alcohol over me.”

“I’m sorry for that too,” Harry says. “I really am. I don’t get why I kept choosing alcohol over people. I don’t get why I was mean to you.”

EMPATHY: The earnest, desperate way in which you say this tugs at Jean’s heartstrings.

“You’re an alcoholic,” Jean says simply. He glances down at his watch. “You should go get cleaned up and ready.”

RHETORIC: This conversation has concluded. He’s not going to let you melt down emotionally, otherwise both of you will be off your game for the rest of the day, and the RCM can’t afford to let its guard down in Martinaise, yet.

“What are we even doing today?” Harry says.

“Your favorite, apparently. Pounding the pavement, maintaining a _presence_.”

Harry squeezes his tender quadricep with his hand. “A light pounding,” he says.

“A light pounding,” Jean agrees.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: A light pounding, huh?

Harry looks hopefully over at Jean, who sighs at him and slides off the bed. “Don’t look at me like that,” he says, going to his suitcase and pulling out a white dress shirt. He slips his arms into the sleeves, then goes over to where his uniform is lying on the staircase railing and starts putting his pants on. “We’re late. We need to get going.”

LOGIC: No pounding, light or otherwise. Not right now, anyway.

“By the way,” Jean says, doing his belt and then flicking his gaze up at Harry, “you owe me a shirt. You ripped one of mine apart last night.” He points at it where it’s still lying discarded on the floor.

“If I could ever figure out where the fuck I keep my money,” Harry exclaims, “I could buy people replacements of all the shit I keep destroying!”

“Yeah, we really need to get you to the bank,” Jean says, buttoning up the shirt he has on. He drapes a necktie over his shoulders and starts tying it; Harry watches idly as his hands work at this. “Lieutenant Kitsuragi said you were selling _bottles_ when he first got here, like a homeless person. He said he was very worried about you. Reflects poorly on all of us, especially me.”

“Why you?” Harry says.

“Because who lets their partner walk around destitute, mentally incompetent and selling bottles to stay alive?” Jean mutters, doing up the cinch on his tie. “I had no idea, of course. He said he was shocked by the state we left you in, that he spent a few days thinking Precinct 41 was a bunch of heartless bastards before he pieced together what had actually happened. I don’t think I helped my case with the G-Bevy bit. But I really did think you were fucking with us...”

He stops and glances at his handiwork in the mirror on the wall, then rolls his eyes and undoes the knot, starting over.

“Lemme try,” Harry says, getting out of bed and hobbling stiff-legged over to Jean.

Jean stands there patiently while Harry picks up each end of the tie and stares at them. Tying a tie is easy, right? He just watched Jean do it. And he’s been wearing ties for the last two weeks.

LOGIC: Yeah, but you haven’t _tied_ any of those ties, you’ve just kept putting on already-knotted ones where you pulled the loop over your head and let them hang on you ludicrously.

SAVOIR FAIRE: It’s called being disco, you mouthy son of a bitch!

“Ah,” Harry says, stalling for time. He holds the smaller end of the tie straight and wraps the larger end around it, then tucks that end into the loop that results and tugs on it, yanking on Jean’s neck and briefly choking him. “Sorry.”

“Harry,” Jean exclaims, pulling the ends out of his hands. “For fuck’s — you don’t have to tie my tie, it’s fine, I have it under control. Go brush your teeth.”

“I wanted to help! I didn’t mean to choke you.”

“I know you didn’t mean to choke me! It’s okay!”

Harry heads glumly down the stairs.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: You know what’s helpful when your self-esteem keeps receiving violent blows? Cocaine!

“I will _not_ do cocaine,” he says out loud to himself as he heads into the bathroom.

“That’s good to hear,” Jean calls down the stairs after him.

/

When they get downstairs, things are instantly awkward. Kim is standing by the bar, paying Sylvie for breakfast, and his eyes light on them as they come downstairs. The expression his face settles into is one of resigned disapproval. He suspected you were going to do what you did last night, but he really wishes that you hadn’t.

COMPOSURE: Wait, how does Kim know?

LOGIC: Well, you look guilty and pleased with yourself, and Jean looks happy but ashamed of himself; there’s a hickey on Jean’s neck that isn’t quite covered by either his hair or his collar; you’re putting about ten feet of personal space between the two of you to look less suspicious, but it’s only making you look _more_ suspicious; through the connecting wall between your rooms, he could hear you giggling and whispering for ages last night; and — oh yeah — he’s a fucking police detective.

“Detectives,” Kim says, meeting them at the foot of the stairs.

“Lieutenant,” Jean says.

Kim turns to Harry, who smiles guilelessly at him. “Lieutenant-Yefreitor,” he says.

RHETORIC: Crazy how he can either say that with the utmost respect for you, or level it like a chilling indictment. Lieutenant double-yefreitor Harry ‘Sex Criminal’ Du Bois: disgrace to the uniform.

SAVOIR FAIRE: Not that you’re _wearing_ a uniform, Mr. Disco-Ass Blazer.

SUGGESTION: Let Kim know there was no penetration last night, that’ll put his mind at ease.

VOLITION: _No!_

“Kimmy,” Harry says in response, inclining his head in respect.

Kim inclines his own. “So, our friend checked out this morning,” he says.

“I noticed his door was open,” Jean says.

Oops. Harry did _not_ notice that. Too busy pondering the nature of love.

“Not sure what that means, but I’ll take it as a win for us, in the absence of evidence to the contrary,” Kim says. He turns to Harry. “What do you think our first point of order should be, today? Our day is going to be pretty free-form… a lot of hurry up and wait. You’re better at that than I am.”

EMPATHY: He’s trying to make up for being chilly when he greeted you. He didn’t mean it, he just wishes you would make better decisions.

VOLITION: Him and me both.

“Well,” Harry says. “I’d like to check in on my dance club kids.”

Discomfort flashes briefly across Kim’s face.

EMPATHY: He thinks your theory about the fleck of pale in the center of the church was dead-on, and being a rational person of sound mind, he’s afraid of pale exposure.

“We don’t have to go in,” Harry adds. “I just want to poke my head in there… see what’s up… check in. I think they need a strong authoritative presence in their lives.”

“Are you that presence?” Jean says dubiously.

“Kim can be, then,” Harry says.

Kim smiles at him. “Let’s go,” he says.

Outside, it’s a sunny, lovely spring day. It’s high tide, and they can both hear and smell the encroaching bay as they walk. As they pass the bookstore, the hair on the back of Harry’s neck starts to rise. He stops mid-stride and starts heading over to the coin-operated binoculars, acting sheerly on instinct.

“What’s up, detective?” Kim calls from behind him.

“Just want to check something,” Harry calls back. He goes over to the binoculars that he first spotted the seafort from, and leans over them. “Shit. I need twenty-five, uh, centims.”

He turns to Jean and Kim, who exchange a look.

“You heard the man,” Kim says to Jean, sounding amused.

Jean pulls his wallet out of his pocket, shaking his head. “You owe me _so_ much money, Harry,” he mutters.

“Exactly, so twenty-five more centims isn’t a big deal,” Harry says. He reaches his hand out, and Jean drops the money into his palm. “Thanks, Jean-Jean.”

Jean ignores this. “What are you up to?” he says, as Harry drops the coins into the viewer and points it in the direction of the crumbling fortress.

“I’m assuming he has some kind of hunch,” Kim says. “Or not… and he’s just fucking around.”

“I am _not_ fucking around,” Harry says, twiddling with the knobs until the island comes into focus. “I do have a hunch.”

“What’s the hunch?” Kim says.

Harry turns the viewer, pushing it as far to the left as it will go, and then he sees it: Titus, Maybe-Tibbs, and Lizzy Beaufort, walking around in the marshes of the island, right around where they found Dros.

“Blammo!” Harry exclaims. He stands up and gestures toward the viewer; Kim and Jean look nonplussed. “Take a look for yourselves. Fucking Titus, Maybe-Tibbs and Lizzy, creeping around our island.”

Kim double-takes at him, then bends toward the viewer, pressing his glasses up against it. “Hmm,” he says.

“Is it them?” Jean says.

“It is,” Kim confirms. “By the way, detective, Maybe-Tibbs _is_ Tibbs. Officer Vicquemare and I bumped into him last night while we were getting drinks.”

“What did he say?” Harry says.

Jean shrugs. “‘Hi, I’m Tibbs.’”

“That was it,” Kim says, still staring through the viewer. “What are they doing… going back over the crime scene?”

“Maybe checking if Dros would have really had a line of sight on Holly when she was shot,” Harry says. “Checking our story out.”

“But how would they know where she was shot?” Kim murmurs, fiddling with the binoculars.

“Maybe Evrart clued them in,” Harry says. “Maybe he’s having them go back over his tracks before we can.”

“Well, we can’t let them do that,” Jean says. “The Union interfering with evidence? That’s not part of our agreement.”

Kim laughs softly and straightens up, removing his glasses to clean them. “Unfortunately, we didn’t come to a formal agreement, did we?” he says. “It was all very… ah… _hand-shaky_. I was afraid this might happen.”

Jean sighs. “Well,” he says, “technically, there isn’t a crime scene to interfere with, since the entire island has been photographed and bagged. I can’t really think of anything they’d be able to do over there that would mess up our case against the Claires. Still…” Kim finishes cleaning his glasses and walks away, and Jean moves to replace him at the viewer. “I wonder what they _are_ doing.”

While Jean spies on the Hardie Boys, Harry takes a few steps back and sits down on the circular seating that surrounds the lone tree on this outcropping of the pier. He waits for Kim to take a seat beside him, then says, “Hi Kim.”

“Hi,” Kim says. He squints from behind his glasses like he’s trying to see the island from here, then makes an expression of dismay. “At least it’s not foggy today.”

Harry leans in. “Hey, can I ask you something?” he says. “Lieutenant to lieutenant?”

Kim starts to answer, but is interrupted by Jean saying, loudly, “Just to be clear, Harry, for all intents and purposes, we _share_ your rank.”

“Right, but it’s _my_ rank,” Harry says, gesturing emphatically even though Jean is bent over the viewer and can’t see him. “Like, if I died tomorrow, they wouldn’t go, ‘Oh, okay, here’s your new badge, Lieutenant-Yefreitor Vicquemare!’”

“Actually,” Kim says, “they would likely make him a lieutenant in his own right, if that were to happen. He’s been running your department for you for months now — that’s the work of a lieutenant. He doesn’t have that rank on paper, no... but that’s because _you_ exist.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant Kitsuragi,” Jean calls, still bent over the viewer.

“Not that you didn’t earn your rank, detective,” Kim adds to Harry. “It just isn’t as linear a hierarchy as you’re making it out to be.”

LOGIC: He’s right, but on a more literal level, you do outrank everyone who’s present.

AUTHORITY: Not on an authority level. And if you outrank Jean, why is he allowed to call you ‘Harry’ and ‘shitkid’ and ‘silly asshole’ and ‘psychopath’ and ‘drunk lunatic’ and ‘deadbeat piece of shit’ and ‘I swore my life to you, Harry, how could you do this to me’?

ENCYCLOPEDIA: Okay, you definitely made some of those up just now. He didn’t say those last few ones.

INLAND EMPIRE: Not in the last two weeks, but he’s said them all to you at some point.

Harry waves his hands in the air as if to scrub this debate from the timestream. “Anyway,” he says to Kim, “as a lieutenant, if you were to flirt with a patrol officer —“

“Harry!” Jean barks, and turns around. “Stop it.”

“Let me ask him! It’s a hypothetical!”

Kim pinches the bridge of his nose for a moment, riding his glasses up against his forehead. “Hang on,” he says, extending a gloved hand to placate Jean, who’s coming back over to them. “Hypothetically, a lieutenant flirting with a patrol officer?”

“Yes,” Harry says, ignoring Jean’s attempts to get him to shut up. “Like, you ask him personal questions, and touch him physically, and invite him out for drinks.”

Jean reaches out and tugs on his earlobe, hard. Harry swats his hand away.

“Well,” Kim says, with an open-palmed gesture. “That could all be innocent.”

“It wasn’t,” Harry says, dodging Jean’s fingers. “It wasn’t innocent, you had filthy intentions. Dark, dirty, _nasty_ intentions.”

“Please, you barely knew what a homosexual was back then!” Jean cries. “Lieutenant, ignore him, he remembered one thing that happened five years ago and now he thinks he’s a sex criminal.”

“A terrible, predatory, lustful sex criminal,” Harry continues, because he’s kind of turning himself on, now. “Full of carnal desires. A walking hard-on, chasing young flesh.”

Kim starts laughing. “Detective,” he says, then more kindly: “Harry.”

Harry looks at him in surprise. “Yes?”

“I wouldn’t worry about it.” Kim’s eyes are twinkling, and he’s smiling.

“You sure?” Harry says.

“Yes. In fact, I give you permission not to.”

AUTHORITY: Thank god.

EMPATHY: He’s seen enough by now to be able to make the call that this was not a case of crass workplace misconduct. Were you a toxic boyfriend, a terrible friend, and a radioactive partner? Yes. Were you a scary, angry, suicidal drunk? Yes. Did you terrorize Jean and exhaust him and break him down and make him weep over you? Yes. Are you excessively flirty for a police officer? Yes. Were you a creepy, exploitative boss? Not really. You were a guy with a crush that you waited five years to act on.

Harry sags against the bench in relief, accidentally resting his elbow in a fresh pile of mulch that someone rounded at the base of the tree they’re sitting beneath.

“So, you remembered something from five years ago?” Kim says. “A specific memory?”

Harry nods.

“That’s a good sign,” Kim says.

“I think so, too,” Jean says, glancing down at Harry.

INLAND EMPIRE: Your memory cannot fit back together like a broken cup — it exploded. But maybe if you collect up as many fragments as you can, that will be enough.

“By the way,” Kim says, “I put in a call to the 57th this morning. Officer Gerstler is awake and talking, as of last night.”

Jean looks relieved. “Is he going to be okay?”

Kim nods. “He’s disoriented, Alice said, and he’ll need some OT, but it doesn’t seem like he’ll have permanent brain damage.”

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT: Yeah, unlike _you._

CONCEPTUALIZATION: Flag on the play! Unnecessary roughness!

“Good,” Jean says. “So he can testify?”

Kim nods again. “Whether or not we’re able to arrest Measurehead today would be a good test of whether or not Evrart intends to keep his promises to us,” he says. “If we can’t…”

He trails off, but he doesn’t need to finish his thought. Jean and Harry both get the drift.

/

They head down the road and over to the waterlock, Kim and Jean’s cop-issue shoes squishing respectably in the muddy grass while the heels on Harry’s snakeskin ones get sucked in and cause him to wobble like a top. At the base of the stairs, they wait, wanting to intercept the Hardie crew when they make their way back over.

For half an hour they stand there in the patient silence of veteran cops who are used to stakeouts. Jean and Harry each smoke a cigarette while Kim looks out over the bay, the sun shining on his face, the wind whipping his jacket.

Finally, Titus, Tibbs and Lizzy appear, walking in a tight-knit group beneath the towering skeleton of the radio tower. The three cops settle into officerial stances; Harry puts his hands on his hips.

The Hardie Boys spot them when they’re halfway across the water lock, but their pace doesn’t change. They meander across the inlet and down the stairs, then stop at the bottom and look back at the cops, expressionless.

Three against three. Harry cracks his knuckles, then says to Titus, “So —no end to the betrayals in my life, is there?”

Titus looks truly baffled. Lizzy huffs under her breath and says, “Titus, you don’t have to talk to him.”

“I know,” he assures her.

Lizzy doesn’t look convinced.

EMPATHY: She knows how much smarter she is than Titus, and she knows that his machismo makes him vulnerable to your manipulations. She’s pissed that she has to now _run_ the Union with Titus, instead of acting as its general counsel; she’s not happy about the prospect of you arresting the Claires, because, as an attorney, she’s very familiar with the Coalition court system and its high conviction rate.

LOGIC: However, she also knows that the Union would not survive Coalition-backed Wild Pines interference, so she’s accepted you as a necessary evil — the devil they know. Her goal is to placate and appease you, while searching frantically for exculpatory evidence that will poke a hole in your case against the Claires, so that Evrart can return home in a month, exonerated, and take back his seat as foreman.

COMPOSURE: Oh, so Lizzy thinks you’re _stupid!_ She thinks you’re stupid and easily distracted and would fall for some kind of “hey look over here” gambit?

LOGIC: Yes.

“What were you doing on the island?” Harry says. “That’s a crime scene and a protected phasmid habitat.”

Tibbs shoots a nervous look at Titus, who opens his mouth and is silenced by a gesture from Lizzy.

“It’s no longer a crime scene, and we don’t need to appraise you of our movements,” Lizzy says, folding her arms. “Step aside.”

“Copper,” Titus says to Harry, “look, we gotta do what we gotta do. You’re gonna do whatever cop shit you’re gonna do. Okay? Let’s not hold it against each other. Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly.”

ENCYCLOPEDIA: Not all birds fly. There are flightless birds.

“There are flightless birds,” Harry says.

Titus’s brow knits. Behind him, Kim coughs as if to say, _Move on._

“I understand,” Harry adds. “In your shoes, I’d do my due diligence too. I just want to warn you, there’s only so much looking the other way that we can do.”

Lizzy scoffs at this. “You are here as _guests_ ,” she says, her voice dripping with the sibilant Revacholian contempt that Jean and Kim are also so good at. “You should remember that. The Union is not cooperating with the RCM. The Union is handling intra-Union affairs while the RCM continues to occupy Martinaise.”

“We are not occupying Martinaise, Ms. Beaufort,” Kim says. “Everyone present is aware of why we’re here, and why we remain here. We intend to make several arrests. Out of courtesy, we’re being transparent about this.”

“Out of courtesy, or desperation?” Lizzy says, her eyes flashing.

In a moment of terrible timing, a Coalition aerostatic passes over their heads as she says this, its floodlights washing over all six of them. Harry looks up at it, momentarily enthralled, his eyes burning as his brain tries to make sense of dizzying inputs. The aerostatic looms massive above them; it’s flying low, lower than Harry has seen since he arrived in Martinaise.

He blinks against the beams of light, his eyes tearing up, and when he opens his eyes again, the aerostatic is moving on, continuing to sweep the coast. As the floodlight glare fades from Kim’s glasses, Harry catches a look of apprehension in his eyes.

Harry turns back to the Hardie Boys. “I’m not desperate,” he lies.

COMPOSURE: Desperate is literally _all_ you are. Everyone here (except for maybe Tibbs) knows that — and your desperation is the only reason you’re still alive.

“You are,” Lizzy says. “I have a right to prepare a robust defense for my clients. The RCM’s attempts to interfere in that _reek_ of desperation.”

That throws Harry and Kim for a loop, but from a few feet behind them, Jean drawls, “What will your ‘robust defense’ be for the Union member who busted open an RCM officer’s head like it was a melon?”

Everyone turns to Jean. He’s leaning against the wall of the pawn shop, his arms folded across his chest and his right hand slid underneath the left side of his jacket.

VISUAL CALCULUS: His fingertips are resting on the grip of his pistol.

ESPRIT DE CORPS: He knows Titus carries, and when Tibbs bumped into him at the bar last night, Jean could feel a gun stuffed into the waistband of his pants. He doesn’t like any of this.

Lizzy stares Jean down, seemingly unperturbed. “The RCM cannot attempt to trespass on private property for the purposes of harassment and intimidation and expect no pushback. The Wayfarer Act expressly forbids that, or have you not read it, _officer_?”

“Whoa, whoa,” Harry says, putting his hands up. “What’s all this shit about _private property?_ I thought everyone here was a communist.”

Kim grabs Harry by the bicep and takes two large steps back, dragging Harry with him. “Go about your day,” he says to Titus, Lizzy and Tibbs. It’s a command, not an invitation.

Lizzy immediately turns on her heel and starts past them toward the road, her posture rod-straight. Titus and Tibbs follow after her.

“What was that about?” Harry says to Kim once they’re out of earshot.

Kim looks at him with a creased brow, like Harry has yet again failed to notice something obvious. “That was a potentially explosive situation,” he says. “I don’t think Titus appreciated Officer Vicquemare reaching for his gun.”

“I did not _reach_ for my gun,” Jean exclaims.

Kim levels a look at him that he’s immediately silenced by.

“I thought we were going to be in good shape, after yesterday,” Harry says with disappointment. “We got the harbor open… we made Titus happy.”

“This is the nature of being a police officer,” Kim says. “These people will never accept you as one of them. Even if they briefly forget what you are, ultimately they’ll always remember. Policing is not a popularity contest.”

“That’s what people say to you when you’re losing a popularity contest,” Harry says.

Kim laughs. “The best you can hope for is mutual respect, which we have.”

“Not from Lizzy,” Harry says.

ENDURANCE: Yeah, it sucks when women don’t respect you. What the fuck is the deal with that?

“Ms. Beaufort is a socialist defense attorney,” Kim says. “She hates cops, she’ll never not hate cops. You can’t win her over.”

SHIVERS: There is always one more door.

“Do you think Jean is trigger-happy?” Harry says to Kim.

“Excuse me,” Jean says. He’s started smoking.

“No, I don’t think he’s _trigger-happy_ ,” Kim says, nodding toward Jean as if to keep him looped into the conversation despite their use of the third person. “Shooting someone is emotionally stressful and puts the brain into a high-arousal state that can take days to get over, even for the most veteran cops… you see danger everywhere. It’s happened to me.”

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: High arousal, you say?

Harry looks at Jean, who’s wearing a sulky expression. “Are you upset about blowing Shanky’s legs off?”

Jean scoffs out a laugh. “I am not upset. I’m agitated. I don’t like this place, it’s full of mini-despots and reavers. No wonder _this_ is where you chose to drink until your brain exploded.”

“How many people have you killed?” Harry says to him.

Jean blows out smoke. “Eight.”

ESPRIT DE CORPS: He volunteered for the RCM at age 19, so that’s a pretty low number — higher than yours, but comparable.

“Do you remember their names?” Harry says.

“I remember everything about them. Why?”

Harry shrugs. “Just asking. I can’t remember the people I killed. And the lieutenant won’t tell me how many people _he’s_ killed.”

“Oh, hundreds of thousands,” Kim says drily. “Alright, I’ll give you this: no officer present has killed into the double digits. Now, can we get moving?”

Jean breaks his leaning stance against the wall and ashes his cigarette on the ground. “People don’t like to talk about this, Harry,” he says. “Just for the record. Normal people, anyway… McCoy _loves_ to talk about it. Maybe when we get back, you can get drinks with McCoy and he can tell you about all the people he’s blown away.”

“That sounds horrible,” Harry says, following Kim up the water lock and across the inlet. “McCoy was in the memory I had earlier, though.”

“Was he?” Kim says, sounding curious.

ESPRIT DE CORPS: Remember, these guys are local legends to him — yeah, it’s very inside baseball, but still. He listens to gossip about them the way you would listen to gossip about Contact Mike, may he rest in peace.

“Yeah,” Harry says, running his hand along the damp railing of the water lock, taking in a deep breath of sea air as it gusts in from the bay. “Apparently he and I used to go out together all the time?”

“Oh, yes, the lieutenant pussyhounds,” Jean says.

Kim barks out a sharp laugh in response to this, scaring a seagull away as they cross over the radio bunker toward the beach.

“I was a pussyhound?” Harry says hopefully.

“Yeah, you were _on the scene_ after you got dumped,” Jean says. “Trying to fuck the pain away. You were very bad at it, though… you told me you kept bursting into tears in the middle of sex.”

Due to this revelation combined with an ill-timed gust of salty sea air, Harry starts to choke on his own saliva. He bends over with his hands on his knees, coughing hysterically, a string of spit dangling from his mouth. Next to him, Jean continues talking: “McCoy thought you’d be a good wingman, but you kept scaring women off because you’d get so overemotional when you drank. One of the times I went out with the two of you, I suggested you should maybe go back to throwing all your energy into work, instead, and you said, Great idea! And that’s what you did. Major tactical error on my part, because when we became partners, _I_ became your primary source of emotional support.”

ENDURANCE: _Crying_ during sex? Good god.

Harry manages to stop choking long enough to say, “Please stop talking.”

“You okay?” Kim says to him.

“No, I’m going to die, Jean’s killing me.” Harry bends into a squat and wraps his arms around his knees. “I’ve never cried during sex. No.”

“You’ve cried during sex with _me_!” Jean retorts in a whisper.

VOLITION: No. Reject this outright.

HALF LIGHT: He lies, he lies. Push this evil man into the sea, drown his lies.

Kim gives Harry a few awkward but kind pats on the back. “Detective,” he says.

Heartened, Harry unfolds himself like a switchblade, staggering back up to his full height and blinking dizzily. “Why are you so mean to me sometimes?” he says to Jean.

“I’m not being mean to you!” Jean exclaims. “I’m telling you the truth! You need to hear the truth from someone who knows what it is, or you’re going to turn into one of those babbling hobos over there!” He points in the direction of Idiot Doom Spiral and company.

“Oh, did you meet them?” Harry says.

“Yes, actually,” Jean says. “When Jude and I followed you and the lieutenant to the fishing village, we noticed your footprints from the scene of your MC crash led over to them.”

Harry turns to Kim. “Damn footprints.”

“Footprints, they’ll get you every time,” Kim says with a wink.

“What did they tell you?” Harry says to Jean.

“That you’re a psychotic drunk who crashed your car into the sea while ranting and raving about the apocalypse,” Jean says.

Harry sucks his teeth. “Disloyal bastards.”

“No, no, they seemed fond of you,” Jean says. “I was editorializing.” He shoots Harry a smile, but when Harry smiles back, he looks away like he’s annoyed with himself.

The three of them are quiet as they make their way through the fishing village, squinting against the bright sun and huddling their arms against the whipping wind. The washerwoman is out, but Lilienne is not. Harry stares in longing at the spot where she usually stands; something about her standing sentry, armed with a sword, was comforting to him. He half-expects Joyce’s sloop to have returned to the jetty, but of course it hasn’t, which is also sad — he found Joyce comforting, too.

Harry lags behind Kim and Jean as they walk through the marshes up toward the church, once again felled by his snakeskin heels while they squish easily through the bog in their sensible police shoes. A wet chill creeps through the sole and breaches Harry’s sock, dealing another emotional blow to him.

They walk in silence up to the church, their steps muffled by the wind whistling in the reeds and the shifting sound of ice breaking in the bay. The church, in contrast, is silent — no thumping music, but it _is_ early.

When they reach the front steps, Harry remembers his theory and turns to Jean.

“Jean,” he says, “I feel like Kim and I should fill you in on what might be going on in this church.”

Jean glances at Kim, then at Harry. “Dance music and drugs?”

“No,” Harry says. “I wish it was just that.”

“Detective,” Kim says to Jean, “do you remember from my case notes, the parts about the anomaly in the church? A spot from which no sound can be heard or recorded... “ He references his blue notebook, then continues: “Which we helped a Soona Luukanen-Kilde run tests on?”

Jean nods. A bitter wind whistles across the fens, mussing his hair and blowing Kim’s straight back from his face. Kim zips his jacket the rest of the way up.

“I didn’t read all of that very thoroughly,” Jean admits. “It didn’t seem relevant to our investigation.”

EMPATHY: Also, he just finds eschatological shit kind of boring.

“Well, the detective has a theory about it,” Kim says, and nods to Harry.

SHIVERS: AFTER LIFE — DEATH; AFTER DEATH — LIFE AGAIN. AFTER THE WORLD — THE PALE; AFTER THE PALE — THE WORLD AGAIN.

Harry clears his throat. “It’s about the pale,” he says.

Jean turns to Kim with a look of alarm. “How much does he know about the pale?”

“Everything, but I didn’t tell him,” Kim says. “The Wild Pines rep did. I tried to stop him from asking, but he was very insistent.”

AUTHORITY: Damn right.

Harry folds his arms behind his back and walks up the two rickety steps to the church door, then turns to them grandly like a museum docent. “Gentlemen,” he says. “My theory.”

“Yes?” Jean says, sounding impatient already.

“For fuck’s sake, Jean, I haven’t even started talking yet,” Harry says.

“Fine, go ahead.”

“Thank you. So, Kim and I helped Soona hook up her radio computer to the sweet-ass sound equipment that these delinquents had,” Harry says. “And what we heard was insane, it almost shredded our minds, much like…” He pauses for dramatic effect. “The pale emitter that Ruby held us hostage with.”

Kim shakes his head. “Way too many things have happened to us in the past two weeks,” he says.

“That’s life when you ride with Tequila Sunset,” Harry says to him with a wink, then turns back to Jean. “Soona concluded that there’s a 2mm hole in reality inside that church. A tiny dent in the universe from which no input escapes.”

Jean looks at Kim, who nods to confirm that this is real shit, not unhinged DT, Wernicke-Korsakoff ravings.

“I think it’s the pale,” Harry says.

Jean’s expression doesn’t change. “The pale is 6,000 km away,” he says.

“I think it starts in the center of isolas, like a malignancy —”

“Oh,” Jean groans, like he’s heard this before.

“Have I told you about this?” Harry says, delighted.

“Yes, and I never wanted to discuss it with you,” Jean says. “I can’t believe you forgot everything about me and somehow remembered your fucking pale malignancy theory.”

“But Jean! It’s _right there!_ ” Harry points wildly behind himself. “The pale, it’s in this church! Is that not fucking insane?”

“If it’s true,” Jean says. “I don’t know. I’m not a entroponeticist, I’m a cop.”

“Did he actually form this theory before we ever met Soona?” Kim says to Jean, looking fascinated.

“At a kitchen table years ago,” Harry says, “with a smoking woman.”

“Dora,” Jean says — his voice flat, as if the name bores him, but the mere sound of it burrows into Harry’s skin and makes him shiver with a fever chill.

“Whoever,” he says resolutely.

“That’s pretty scientific thinking, to come up with that out of nowhere,” Kim says.

“That’s DB,” Jean says. “His brain is a threshing machine. Anything you can throw at him, he’ll think it to death until he comes up with a solution, then he looks for more things to think to death.”

LOGIC: That’s a lot of why Dora leaving undid you — you couldn’t think your way out of it. Six years later, you’re still trying to think your way out of it.

INLAND EMPIRE: There are some blocks that a can-opener cop brain can’t think past, though. One of the reasons it’s so horrific to lose the person we love the most is that we become convinced we’ll never be able to love again. Your obsessive logical cop brain led you down the path of that thought and abandoned you there.

But you’ve loved since Dora. You loved (love) Jean in some fashion. You’ve loved random people you’ve come across — the most wretched specimens of society that you’ve tended to on the job, you’ve loved them, because they were as human as you are. You love Kim, the angel who saved your life and dragged you to safety under his protection. You’ve loved your coworkers, you’ve loved people you met in a bar ten minutes prior. You loved the phasmid. Your tenderness toward Lena, Garte, Cuno, Easy Leo: it’s all love. You can still love, you can heal the hole she left when she went away.

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT: Please say it’s not too late.

INLAND EMPIRE: It’s _not_ too late.

Harry stands there in silence for a moment, his face hot and his nose stinging, tears pearling in his eyes. Then he gathers himself and says, “Well, anyway, that’s my working theory. So, Vicquemare, consider yourself fully briefed. You can decide for yourself whether or not you want to come in with us.”

Jean appears to consider it. “I’ll come in and stand in the doorway,” he says.

“I’m right there with you,” Kim says.

EMPATHY: Even moreso than pale exposure, he’s afraid that if he follows you as far as the dance floor, you’ll command him to dance again, then try to outdance him and have a fatal heart attack.

Harry turns to the door and opens it, calling “Hello!” into the dark church.

Someone groans in the distance. “Ay,” they call. “Whozzat?”

“It’s me, Harry Du Bois, your cop friend,” Harry calls back. “Is that Andre?”

“Sure is,” Andre calls back. “One sec…” Harry hears the sound of feet hitting a wood floor, then footsteps.

“By the way,” Kim says in an undertone as they wait, “that Coalition aerostatic earlier… do you two also think it was looking for us specifically?”

“Yes,” Jean says, while Harry exclaims, “What?”

“It makes sense,” Kim says to him. “The agent next door checked out, but they’re not going to give up watching us.”

Suddenly paranoid, Harry turns and sticks his head back out the door to scan the sky for aircraft. When he turns back around to the church, the lights are on, and Andre is walking down the dais steps past Soona’s computer. Noid, Acele and Egg Head are all curled up in sleeping bags in the pews. Noid and Egg Head appear to still be asleep, but Acele lifts her head to look at Harry and waves at him.

Harry waves back, then glances at the shattered image of Dolores Dei that towers over them all. His heart stirs, and his chest begins to hurt, but that might be from the cold air and the cigarettes.

INLAND EMPIRE: Everything that is, or was, or will be, is exactly as it should be. There is not a hair or atom out of place anywhere; there never has been.

Harry thumps his fist against his chest to dispel the aching burn that has suffused through his ribcage. Andre crosses the center of the church and makes his way over to the door; his hair is messy from sleep, the spikes unraveling and making his premature balding more evident. “What’s up, officers?” he greets them, without reacting to Jean’s unexpected presence.

EMPATHY: He’s worried that Jean has always been a part of your posse and he somehow completely forgot about him due to his drug use, so he’s pretending nothing has changed, just in case. 

“Oh, not much,” Harry says. “Just checking in.”

“You sleep in there?” Kim says to Andre, sounding uneasy.

“Yeah,” Andre says. “Why not? Warmer than the tent.”

“You put your tent on a sheet of ice,” points out Kim.

Andre looks at him like he doesn’t understand why this is relevant.

“There’s a hole in reality in the middle of this church,” Harry says.

Andre shrugs, like, _What can you do?_

“Great, glad we had this conversation,” Jean says.

“Real quick,” Harry says, leaning against the doorway and tilting his chin up at Andre, “you see anything weird around here, these past few days?”

“Out here?” Andre says, shrugging his hole-filled sweater more securely around his shoulders and poking his head out the door, glancing around. “Nah… Soona did mention something weird yesterday, though...”

Kim readies his blue notebook, and Harry nods to Andre eagerly. Andre takes a long moment to yawn (all while Harry continues to nod at him like a lunatic) then says, “She mentioned she’s been getting interference ever since she reported her findings back. Her radio computer keeps crashing. That’s actually where she is, right now… out looking around for a jammer.”

“A jammer?” Harry says.

“Yeah,” Andre says. “She’s convinced she’s being interfered with intentionally. I think it’s probably got more to do with the hole in reality, but she doesn’t think so. Dunno.”

Kim’s brow knits, like he agrees with Soona.

“Who would be jamming her?” Harry says to him.

Kim shrugs. “The Coalition? Wild Pines? The Union? There would be a lot of interest in keeping this discovery quiet, especially if an actual entroponeticist were to hear about the swallow, come study it, and confirm your pale theory.”

“There would be mass chaos,” Jean says. “The tax base would desert Jamrock, property values would crater.”

“She even accused _us_ of jamming her,” Andre says. “I was like, look, admittedly, I don’t want this pale thing fucking up our dance club, but none of us have any idea how to jam a radio computer.” He yawns. “Hey, if that’s all, I’m gonna go back to bed.”

“Don’t let us keep you,” Kim says humorously. Andre waves and lets the church door fall shut; they hear him walking away.

“Do you think Lena replied to my letter yet?” Harry says to Kim.

“I’m sure she has, if she’s had time,” Kim says, as the three of them head back down the stairs and start traipsing across the marsh. “They published an interview with her and Morell in _L'autre Monde_ a few days ago… I think that’s what Evrart was referring to yesterday. Now that the harbor gates are open, I’m thinking we’ll see scientists parachuting into Martinaise to try to study the phasmid.”

“Literally parachuting?” Harry says, imagining the skies over Martinaise filled with invading scientists.

Kim laughs. “No, it’s an expression. So… where to next?”

“We’ll need to call a wagon and backup, if we want to arrest Measurehead,” Jean says. “We can’t leave to transport him… unless you want _me_ to go.”

“No, better to not hollow out our numbers, I think,” Kim says. “If I call the 57th, I’m sure they’d be happy to send a few officers to escort him into custody, if you two are okay with allowing them to take it from here.”

“Of course,” Jean says.

Kim nods. “Are we ready to go make an arrest, then?”

“Let’s take a whack at it,” Harry says.

Kim adopts a steely-eyed look and starts leading them back toward the fishing village. Harry slings an arm around Jean’s shoulders, half out of a desire for closeness with Jean, and half because he needs to lean on something to stabilize himself as the mud tries to suck his shoes off his feet.

“What have you done to this place, Harry?” Jean mutters. “You were here for a few days, and suddenly it’s the center of the apocalypse.”

“I am but a cockatoo in a coal mine,” Harry says, squeezing him. “You liked the mural, didn’t you?”

“Which mural?”

“‘True love is only possible in the next world, destroy the middle class’?”

Jean laughs. “I didn’t _like_ the mural. I just didn’t want us to take it down and look like dicks.”

EMPATHY: Liar. He liked it. He dislikes the middle class and thinks love is impossible — of course he liked it. He also liked when you set Cindy’s graffito on fire.

“Do you think there’s a next world?” Harry says. “After death, life, after the pale, the world again?”

“I don’t know,” Jean says. “I don’t think it matters.”

“Does it scare you when I talk about this stuff?”

Jean hesitates. “Yes.”

“Why? Because it’s existentially scary if I’m right, or because you think I’m brain damaged and spewing nonsense?”

“Both, somehow.”

Harry squeezes him again.

/

To their surprise, Evrart is actually willing to give up Measurehead. It only takes Harry going over to Mañana on the stairs and calling up to him, “Can you send Jean-Luc down?” Mañana nods in reply, and about fifteen minutes later, Measurehead comes walking through the harbor gates, underdressed as usual.

“HAM SANDWICH,” he greets Harry when he walks up to him, with Jean and Kim trailing apprehensively behind. “YOU WANT TO ARREST ME?”

“Will you allow me?” Harry says.

“YES,” Measurehead says. “ULTIMATELY, THIS IS THE ROLE I HAVE TO PLAY IN THE DOWNFALL OF THE LIBERAL HOSTAGE-TAKERS WHO KEEP REVACHOL AS A PET. I AM AN ACCELERATIONIST; I SURRENDER FOR THE GREATER GOOD.”

RHETORIC: Did he just use a semicolon out loud?

“Okay,” Harry says. “But I think my friend Kim should arrest you, because it’s his friend whose brain you busted open.”

“FINE,” Measurehead says. “I WOULD PREFER TO BE ARRESTED BY THE SEOLITE THAN BY YOU. UNLIKE YOU, HE DOES NOT REEK OF CRIPPLING DEGENERACY.”

“What an honor,” Kim says, then begins to recite: “Your Wayfarer rights have been suspended. Information provided to the officers on the scene will be used against you by the prosecution. You will be given legal counsel within one week, and must face court in 44 days…”

They had called Precinct 57 for backup about twenty minutes prior, so as they’re walking Measurehead down the road to Kim’s MC, an RCM paddywagon roars up with its lights and sirens on. Two officers jump out — both young guys.

“Hi,” says the one who was driving as Harry walks up to him, squinting in the late morning haze. He extends his hand to Harry. “Lieutenant Du Bois? I’m Sergeant Toussaint Forbes, this is Officer Kristof Donlon. Is that Jean-Luc?”

“Sure is,” Harry says, shaking his hand. “How did you know my name?”

“Oh, we all know who you are over at the 57th, sir,” Kristof says.

RHETORIC: For the most part, this is not a compliment. You rank anywhere from ‘notorious’ to ‘infamous’ on the RCM fame scale.

Kristof heads over to take custody of Measurehead from Kim, who nods to him and says, “Good morning, Officer Donlon.”

“Morning, lieutenant,” Kristof says.

“Morning, Sergeant Forbes,” Kim says, as Toussaint comes over to help Kristof.

“Morning, lieutenant,” Toussaint says. “Shit, this guy is big.”

Measurehead rolls his eyes as he’s dragged away and shoved into the paddywagon.

The summer door to the Whirling busts open behind them, and all of them turn to look. Out of the doorway stumbles Titus, who Harry instantly recognizes as slobbering drunk.

HALF LIGHT: Watch out. He wants to fight somebody. He’s all fucked up on alpha-male machismo.

“My cop friends!” he exclaims, staggering over to them and dropping his arms heavily over Kim and Harry’s shoulders. “My cop buddies… is this how it’s gonna be from now on? The RCM just waltzes on down here and carts us away, one by one?”

“Mr. Hardie,” Kim says, ducking out from under his arm and going over to stand beside Jean, “you knew we were going to arrest Jean-Luc. Let’s not make things difficult.”

Kristof slams the paddy wagon doors shut and bolts them, then turns to Titus. “This is the big threat down here, Kitsuragi?” he says to Kim. “Bunch of fucking dockworkers who walk around drunk at eleven in the morning?”

“Watch it,” Titus warns, raising his left hand, which has a beer in it. “We’re _letting_ you be here, we’re _letting_ you arrest Measurehead. Don’t get mouthy.”

The energy has rapidly soured. Kim, Toussaint and Jean are hovering on the edges of this confrontation, looking unsure about whether or not to intervene.

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT: Get out of the way. Now.

Harry ducks out from under Titus’s arm and takes a step back from him, putting his hands up. “Calm down,” he says, but everyone ignores him.

“You’re _letting_ us be here?” Kristof exclaims, stepping forward into Titus’s space. Toussaint reaches out and touches him on the arm, trying to tug him back, but his partner ignores him. “Buddy, are we or are we not in Revachol? You’re talking to the _Revachol Citizen’s Militia._ ”

“You have no power,” Titus spits at him. “You’re a fucking meter maid with a white rectangle on your arm.”

“Better than being a dumb, drunk thug living in this fucking armpit,” Kristof says, and starts to turn away.

Time slows down as Harry realizes Titus is cocking his fist back. Kristof must catch sight of Titus’s clumsy wind-up in his peripheral vision, because he ducks just in time. Untrammeled, Titus’s fist sails through the air, only stopping when it connects with Harry’s cheekbone.

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT: The entire world has just exploded. Goodbye, everybody!

PAIN THRESHOLD: There isn’t even any pain yet, that’s how bad this is going to hurt.

Harry crashes to his knees on the pavement, guturally bellowing “FUCK!” as every muscle in his face seizes.

“Oh, shit,” Titus slurs from somewhere above him. The planet is spinning; Harry hangs onto the dirty, wet street so he doesn’t fall into the sky. “I’m sorry, copper. I was _not_ aiming for you, at all.”

“ _What the fuck are your fists made of!_ ” Harry screams in despair.

Above him, there’s shouting and arguing, but he can’t understand any of it. All Harry knows is shock and hot white pain. After some time, both of those things recede enough for him to rejoin the world, and he realizes that someone is kneeling beside him, patting him on the back.

“Detective, let me take a look at your face,” Kim’s voice says.

Harry tilts his head up, but keeps his eyes closed, because the pounding in his head is making him feel like they’re going to pop out of their sockets. Kim’s hands move over his face, his touch as gentle as cat whiskers.

“You’ll be okay,” he says after a moment. “You’ll have a shiner and a headache, though. You should see the lazareth about it, when we get back.”

Harry opens his eyes. His vision is blurry, but it begins to clear; he can see Kim squatting in front of him, looking at him with concern. Footsteps approach behind Harry, and then Jean says, “Is he okay?”

“Yeah,” Kim says, getting to his feet and helping Harry to his.

“Did they arrest Titus?” Harry says, staggering as the world around him spins.

“No, Officer Vicquemare and I were able to convince them not to,” Kim says. “They took Measurehead and went on their way.”

“I sent Titus back to the Whirling,” Jean says. “He’s apologetic. I told him to sober up.”

Harry turns blearily to Jean, who takes one look at him and cracks up.

“Are you _laughing_ at me right now?” Harry cries.

“No, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Jean says, sobering, reaching up to pat him on the chest with a grin on his face. “I’m not. It was just so funny, if you’d have been able to see it… very slapstick… See, the lieutenant is laughing, too.”

“No, I’m not,” Kim says, turning his head away fast.

“Are you okay?” Jean says to Harry, his eyes soft.

Harry nods. “I would like to take a bath,” he says, trying to muster as much dignity as he can. “And I would like some pain medication. And I don’t want to do any more copping for the rest of today.”

“I don’t think anyone could blame us for knocking off for the day,” Kim says. “I’ll head over to Frittte… would you like anything, Officer Vicquemare?”

“Yeah, get a few beers for you and me, to celebrate us actually making an arrest,” Jean says.

Harry gives him a betrayed look. He would _love_ a beer right now.

“Don’t worry, we won’t drink them in front of you,” Jean says, reaching up to brush the pad of his finger over Harry’s injured cheekbone. Harry winces in anticipation of pain, and he says, “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Harry says, as Kim walks away. “You didn’t actually hurt me.”

Jean smiles at him.

/

Harry soaks in the tub of his and Jean’s room (Klaasje’s room) for three hours, applying a fresh ice pack to his face every half hour. The ice packs come from the Whirling-in-Rags freezer, with Jean and Kim cycling them out every time the one Harry’s using melts.

Jean is the one who comes in and delivers them to Harry due to his nakedness, although when he first expressed dismay about Kim seeing him naked, Kim called through the bathroom door, “But I’ve already _seen_ you naked, detective.”

“What?” Harry cried in shock while Jean, who was sitting on the edge of the tub, laughed his ass off.

“How do you think I got you out of your blood-soaked clothes and had them washed?” Kim said. “Do you think I’m some kind of a sorcerer? I took your clothes off. I thought you knew that.”

“Kim,” Harry said, “did you look at my wiener?”

“I tried not to,” Kim called back. “But I’m a professional, I’ve seen a lot of… wieners. We saw one together, remember? Lely’s? You grabbed it? I’m still not sure why you did that.”

Jean, at this point, was laughing so hard he was wheezing.

The rest of the time, Harry lies in the tub and stares at the wall, occasionally turning the tap with his toes to refresh the water. Out in the living room, he can hear Jean and Kim laughing and talking while they drink. He feels a little left out, but not in an overly terrible way. Sometimes he hears his name, but it’s never spoken with malice; usually with amusement.

Once Harry has steeped until he can no longer stand the humidity of the bathroom, he gets out, sanitizes his gunshot wound, and sloppily re-bandages it while. He gets dressed and steps out into the living room, interrupting Kim and Jean’s conversation. Kim, who’s sitting on the couch, raises his beer in a toast to Harry.

“Feel better?” says Jean, who’s sitting in the writing desk chair, his body language loose and relaxed.

Harry nods, then winces when pain reverberates through his skull as a result. “Yeah. You guys having fun?”

Kim nods. “Just discussing the case,” he says.

“I think we should get you over to the bank, Harry,” Jean says. “See how bad the damage is.”

“Okay,” Harry says. “Who do I bank with?”

“Revachol First Union,” Jean says, and Kim nods.

“That’s where everyone banks,” Kim says.

ENCYCLOPEDIA: Revachol First Union is owned by Desbordes, a multinational conglomerate that makes most of its money strip-mining jungles to make hand lotion. That is where your money is — what little of it you still have.

Harry nods. “Let’s go, then,” he says.

“We’ll have to drive,” Jean says. “The closest branch is 2km away, in the GRIH.”

“Should I drive, since you’ve both been drinking?” Harry says.

Jean shoots a wide-eyed look at him.

LOGIC: That’s a look of ‘this is the most out-of-character thing I’ve ever heard you say’.

“Do you remember how to drive?” Kim says to him.

Harry considers the question. “Unclear,” he says.

EMPATHY: Kim is absolutely not going to let you drive his beloved Coupris when it’s ‘unclear’ whether or not you even know how to drive.

“I can drive us, it’s fine,” Kim says. “I’ve only had the one beer.”

“ _Lieutenant_ ,” Jean exclaims as he pulls his coat on, pretending to be scandalized. Kim laughs.

/

The GRIH is not what Harry expected. It’s great, lonely expanses of road that travel through harbor and docks, massive cargo ships towering above them with containers stacked in colorful mosaics. The harbors and docks are broken up by small residential areas and businesses, waterfront seafood restaurants with nondescript names, clapboard houses and sad roadside fuel stations.

The bank is near one of the larger harbors, tucked away on a busy cobblestone street, flanked on either side by a funeral home and a pawn shop. Kim parks out front, quieting the roar of his engine, and the three of them hop out.

Everyone who’s bustling by on the street notices them and the fact that they’re cops, but they pretend not to. When they reach the bank, Kim stops and leans against one of the windows, looking devastatingly cool.

“I’ll stay here, detectives,” he says. “Keep an eye out. I don’t have any banking to do today.”

Harry turns to the glass doors of the bank, suddenly apprehensive. Jean ushers him through with a hand against his back.

Inside, it’s chaos: phones ringing, bells chiming, people walking around and talking, orderly lines with velvet-roped stanchions separating people from each other. Harry stops dead.

“Go get in line,” Jean says.

“I don’t remember anything about any of this.”

“I know,” Jean says. “Get in line.”

Harry gets in line behind an elderly woman, who glances at him. Stoned on drouamine, he gives her The Expression back, and she smiles politely.

SAVOIR FAIRE: You still got it.

Waiting in line at the bank is interminable. Harry can sense Jean behind him the entire time — the heat of his body, his lungs taking in air and releasing it, his heart thumping. He wants to turn around and kiss him, and not stop kissing him until they have sunk to the floor and are violently disrobing each other.

Finally, it’s his turn. Harry walks up to the open teller and says, through the golden bars of the cage that separates them, “I need some money.”

“Okay,” the teller says, looking up and sounding alarmed.

Jean sidles up beside him. “Please make it clear to her that you’re not trying to rob this bank,” he says under his breath.

“Oh!” Harry says. “No, sorry. I need _my_ money. No, not robbing a bank, I’m a cop. We’re cops. Look at all our white rectangles.”

“Very good, sir,” the teller says, looking relieved. “What name is your account with us under?”

“Harry Du Bois,” says Harry. “Of Jamrock.”

The teller nods and turns to a radio computer terminal, starting to type. “Okay,” she says. “I see your account… could you recite your six-digit pin, please?”

Harry stares at her, his brain sputtering to a halt. The throbbing in his head increases tenfold.

“My six-digit pin,” he repeats.

“Yes sir,” she says.

ENCYCLOPEDIA: Don’t look at me. This information has been lost to history.

“What… would that be?” Harry says.

The teller appears nonplussed. “I don’t know, sir, it’s _your_ pin.”

“But I lost my memory recently,” he says.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t let you access your account without your pin.” She seems truly apologetic.

“I don’t know my pin,” Harry says. “Do you not have any kind of corporate procedure in place for when your customers get amnesia?”

He’s getting a little loud, now; Jean reaches out and touches his arm. “ _I_ know his pin, miss,” he says to the teller.

“Okay, but he has to be the one to say it to me,” the teller says, wincing.

“I lost my memory!” Harry exclaims, making the entire bank go silent for a moment.

“Harry, fucking calm down,” Jean says. He leans into his ear, his lips brushing Harry’s cheek, and whispers: “Four-three-two-one-zero-five.”

“ _That’s_ my pin?” Harry says to him.

Jean nods. “You like it when things are easy to remember.”

Harry turns back to the teller, who smiles like a hostage. “Four-three-two-one-zero-five,” he says.

“Great.” She types this into her radio computer, and it prints a sheet of information, which she hands to him.

Harry accepts it, noting that it’s thick and pearly white. Banks clearly have access to the good paper. It reads:

_HARRIER DU BOIS_

_CUSTOMER OF REVACHOL FIRST UNION SINCE 08-02-26_

_CURRENT BALANCE: ✤145.56_

“I have a hundred and forty-five reál,” Harry says to Jean.

“Hmm,” Jean says, taking the paper from him and examining it. “That’s not even your full paycheck.”

“How much do I get per paycheck?”

“It should be more like two hundred and fifty,” Jean says, “and that’s assuming your account was at absolute zero when our paychecks went through.”

The teller turns back to her radio computer and studies the screen for a moment, then says, “He had a negative balance, so there was an automatic deduction as soon as the money from his last paycheck entered his account.”

“Oh, look at that.” Jean folds the paper in half, creasing it like he’s angry at it, and hands it back to Harry. “Destitute as usual. Sounds about right.”

“Can I have some of this money?” Harry says to the teller.

“You’d like to make a withdrawal?” she translates. “Sure. How much?”

“Uhh… eighty, let’s say,” Harry says.

The teller nods, then opens some kind of drawer mechanism at her desk and starts thumbing through a stack of banknotes inside the drawer. She selects eight notes and starts to wrap them up with a paper band. Harry leans forward out of curiosity, and Jean tugs him back.

“Here you go, sir,” the teller says, handing him his pitiful stack of money.

Harry takes it and thanks her. Jean leads him out, and they reunite with Kim, who’s still leaning against the window, gazing out over the water.

“Success?” Kim says to them.

Jean nods and lights a cigarette. “I think Harry’s a little shocked to find out just how poor we cops are,” he says.

“I did know,” Harry says. “Kim told me. It’s just bleak to see it for yourself.”

“You’re also just very good at squandering money,” Jean says. “You’ve made a sport out of it. It’s shocking for a forty-four year old man who’s been continuously employed for his entire adult life to have a hundred and fifty reál to his name.”

“Well,” Kim says, “people fall on hard times.”

EMPATHY: He’s being kind. It is shocking, but in a sad way, not an anger-inducing one — except for someone like Jean, who you owe money to.

LOGIC: I’m afraid to ask how much money.

ENCYCLOPEDIA: Let’s just say it’s in the hundreds and leave it at that.

Harry stuffs his money in his pocket and shakes off some drouamine-induced dizziness. “Anyway,” he says. “Let’s go back to Martinaise.”

“If it hasn’t been burned down in our absence,” Kim says with a grin, and heads for the driver’s side door of his MC.

“By the way, lieutenant, what’s the deal over at the 57th?” Jean says to Kim while taking the passenger side. Harry assumes that he’s been relegated to the back seat, yet again. This seems to have become SOP. “Why are their officers so set on antagonizing the union?”

Kim settles into the driver’s seat and switches the radio on, scrolling through until he reaches something inoffensive. He puts his arm across Jean’s headrest to look behind him while he backs out, shooting Harry a smile as he does. “More in-born tension,” he says. “Young men growing up in the GRIH have only a few ways to make a living. Half choose some kind of public service, half choose to become stevedores. There’s a natural enmity between GRIH cops and dockworkers. ‘What might have been.’”

“Are they also maybe mad at us because we stole you?” Harry says.

Kim’s smile grows wider. “Maybe!” he says, before turning back around and stepping on the gas.

/

The day gets warmer as it drags on, and the three of them fill their afternoon with smoke breaks, calls to Precinct 41 to check in, and public meanderings for the purpose of reminding the Union that the RCM is still on the scene. When the sun starts to go down, Harry goes out on Klaasje’s balcony to smoke one of Jean’s cigarettes and watch the sunset. It’s a beautiful one; the sun cracks and spills its boundaries like a yolk, bleeding into the crimson sky.

He hears the door creak open behind him, then turns and sees Jean. He’s stripped down to his undershirt and pants, and the orange glow from the sky lights him up. He looks at Harry and smiles, then lights his own cigarette and walks over to join him at the balcony railing.

“It’s a nice view,” Harry says.

“It is,” Jean agrees.

He thinks of Klaasje and Lely up here, Klaasje and Ruby up here, Klaasje and Titus up here.

ENDURANCE: That chick really got around.

Harry raises his cigarette at the sea in a toast to Klaasje, wherever she is.

SHIVERS: She’s in an undisclosed location, far to the south, in a place with no delineation between spring and winter. It’s hot and beautiful all year round, there; the leaves of plants are the size of dinner plates, and the insects are vicious blood-suckers. She’s sitting on the patio of a restaurant that overlooks the ocean, wearing sunglasses and reading a magazine, watching the sun go down as you do the same. Her hair is different, her clothes are different, she’s changed the way she carries herself. At first glance, you wouldn’t recognize her. But the fear and paranoia are still there. They will never leave her. They are her forever companions.

Harry watches Jean smoke — watches his cheeks hollow as he breathes in and then his lips pout as he breathes out, watches the smoke dance in the golden air.

“I want to touch you so bad,” Harry blurts out.

Jean smiles. “Up here? In full view of all of Martinaise?”

Harry squints south toward the seafort. “Maybe not,” he says, but he leans in toward Jean, close enough to breathe his smoke-filled air. He lets his own hand fall to his side, twiddling his cigarette in his fingers.

Jean brushes his shoulder against Harry’s, his touch crackling like static against Harry’s skin. Harry puts his cigarette back in his mouth and grabs Jean by the waist, rubbing his thumb over Jean’s hipbone.

“Harry,” Jean scolds him, his accent thick. _Hhhhhhhhârrieeeeee_.

In a move that he must have practice with, though he doesn’t remember said practice, Harry rolls his cigarette to the edge of his mouth so he can talk around it. “I dare these fucking people to do anything about it,” he says, staring Jean down.

Jean seems momentarily compelled by this, blinking slowly at him, then steps backward to pull free from his grasp. He takes a drag off his own cigarette. “Don’t call their bluff,” he says. “They would.”

Harry nods, then starts dancing away from the edge of the railing, miming pulling Jean by an invisible rope. “Let’s go inside,” he says, ignoring the pain and stiffness in his thigh.

Jean laughs, takes a drag off his cigarette, then drops it into the ashtray on the little table beside the large radio antenna. He follows Harry through the balcony door into the bedroom, and pulls the curtains shut behind them.

Harry goes over to sit on the edge of the bed, suddenly exhausted. The drouamine is wearing off, now, and prickly, unpleasant reality is climbing back into his brain. He takes a violent drag off of the stub of his cigarette before putting it out on the bedside table.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Right now would be a really good time to start drinking.

VOLITION: Yeah, a great time to start drinking, except you’d lose absolutely everything worth living for.

Jean comes over to him, leaning one knee on the bed between his legs and dropping his head to kiss him. Hot blood floods Harry’s body like molten steel, filling every cavity and crevice, rushing to his dick and making it twitch.

Harry reaches up and balls his t-shirt in his fist, holding Jean in place. Jean wraps his arms around Harry’s shoulders, kissing him harder, brushing Harry’s bruised cheekbone and making him inhale with a pained hiss. They separate momentarily, breathing each other’s warm air.

“Can we lie down?” Harry murmurs.

Jean nods, and they do. Harry wraps Jean up in his arms, sliding them underneath his shirt so he can feel the heat of his skin, pressing his hands to Jean’s back so hard that he can feel the distant echo of his heartbeat.

“If I fall asleep, will you be here when I wake up?” Harry says.

Jean nods again.

Harry lets his eyes fall shut, nuzzling Jean’s neck. “Okay.”


End file.
